Hey all, so it’s the weekend again (woop!) which means I finally have a little time to get back in the kitchen and bake. Now it has been a pretty darned long week but … (now this may only be exciting for those of us camped out in the colder parts of the world) .. as I left work on Friday the sun was still in the sky! So I arrived home thoroughly bathed in vitamin D and ready to bake something tasty.

I decided, mostly because there was a bit of a surplus of cream cheese in the fridge (due largely to my inability to walk away from a buy one get one free offer in the store, even if I have no clue what I’d do with half a kilo of cream cheese), that a carrot cake would be the perfect recipe for this weekend.

Each week in our veg box we get some seriously muddy carrots which we then hide in all sorts of recipes, which is a bit of a shame since under all that mud they are seriously glow-in-the-dark orange and tasty. So I’m very excited to make them the star of the show.

Given that it’s still January when dieting is on a lot of people’s minds and the fact we don’t particularly have a need for a huge cake, I decided to bake my carrot cake in a loaf tin. This makes it super easy to have a little bit of portion control and fits in the fridge nicely to save for another day. If you wanted to make a proper 9 inch round cake, all you need to do is double the recipe and pour it into two 9 inch round cake tins and layer with extra cream cheese frosting.

My final thought for the day – (feel free to scroll down and ignore me if you are just here for the cake!) we had a load of blueberries in the house this week as they were reduced to silly cheap prices at the store and freeze real well. Sam, the lovely thing that she is, decided she would bake us some Blueberry Muffins with some of them as a treat for when I got in from work. For starters it should be noted that she started off by digging through the bookcase looking for a good recipe before I pointed out one of the joys of having your own blog is that all your best recipes are already up online ready to use. Now even if I do say so myself, my recipe made amazing Blueberry Muffins, but what was kinda neat was that I got to see how easy, or not, one of my recipes is to follow. Feedback from Sam was that it was all pretty straight forward but would have helped to have the ingredients listed in the order they are then required, so I’ll try and do that in the future. If you can think of any other improvements just let me know (be kind :D).

Soft, Spiced and Delicious Carrot Cake (fills one loaf tin)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups grated carrot (about 2 medium carrots)

1 1/3 cups plain flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 tablespoon cocoa powder

1/2 cup caster sugar

3/4 cup soft brown sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 large eggs

1/2 cups raisins (optional)

For the cream cheese frosting:

1/2 cup butter (at room temperature – very important!!!)

3/4 cup cream cheese

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 cup powdered sugar

1) Carrots – First things first its time to prep the carrots. If yours were anything like mine they need a good scrub and peel to start. Next grab a grate and grate into a bowl until you have about a cup and a half (see I told you our carrots practically glow in the dark!).

2) Dry Ingredients– In a large bowl add your flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and cocoa powder and mix together so that everything is evenly distributed. You probably should grab a sieve and sieve everything together, but I can never find ours and mixing it up seemed to work out fine.

3) Wet ingredients– In the bowl of your stand mixer add the sugars, oil and eggs and mix on a medium speed for about a minute. Next fold in the dry ingredients until just combined.

4) Finish up the batter – Finally add the grated carrot and half of the raisins, if you are using them, and stir a few times to distribute everything evenly.

5) Ready to bake – Preheat your oven to 175ºC (350 F) and grab your loaf tin from wherever he lives. Line the bottom with baking parchment to make sure everything comes out of the tin (very sad when your perfect cake won’t come out to play). Pour your cake batter into the tin making sure it’s level. Finally sprinkle the remaining raisins across the top and submerge under the surface so that they don’t get burnt. The raisins have a habit of sinking so adding a few more at the top will make sure there are some in every slice.

6) Bake and cool – Pop in the oven for 45 – 50 mins or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. If you are a little worried about the cake getting too dark you can cover it lightly with a piece of baking parchment for the last 15 mins. When the cake is ready, turn it out of the tin onto a cooling rack and hang about for a bit until it’s cold.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients (I duplicated these down here to keep things simple):

1/2 cup butter (at room temperature – very important!!!)

3/4 cup cream cheese

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 cup powdered sugar

1) Mix -In a small bowl whisk together the cream cheese and butter until smooth and creamy. I can not say enough how important it is for the butter to be soft. If it isn’t you’ll be left with odd buttery lumps in your frosting – not cool. Next mix in the vanilla and slowly fold in the powdered sugar until all of it is combined.

2) Spread – Finally spread on the top of your carrot cake, stand back and be impressed at your finished baked creation. You may have a little frosting left over, whilst it might seem like a good snack, I’d wager it’s probably not considered a health food.

Well I hope you lovely people are all having a great weekend too. The sun seems to have abandoned me again, but now I have a cake and a cup of tea to enjoy it with so life is still looking pretty good. Let us know what you have been baking this weekend!

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

About Cook Quilt Make and Bake

Hi, I'm Sam, he's Phil. Welcome to our blog where we share our fun down time projects. We're just a young couple, happily cooking, making, quilting and baking our way through life and love. You're welcome to stop by and share the good times!

Our carrots really are a super bright orange at the moment, if I didn’t know that they were organic I’d think there was some chemistry going into their colour! Just nature’s own goodness I guess 😀 Phil

I use my blog as a reference in the kitchen too…especially now that I have a nook (an e-reader) upon which I can pull up internet sites! And I often pull up other blogs too of course (such as yours), it’s very handy.

Anyway, the carrot cake looks delectable. I haven’t made one in a while so I think I will give this one a whirl, I’ve enjoyed all the recipes of yours I’ve tried so far 🙂

We were a little slow to realise how useful our blog might be for us as well as others. We’re super jealous that you have an e-reader on hand in the kitchen to check recipes, we usually end up running back and forth to the lounge to consult a laptop and forget what we just read on the way!

hope you did have a lovely week-end with your carrot cake. I must try this recipe and
particularly the frosting. This frosting will be a change from cream for a gent I cook for
who demands that cakes are not good without cream.

Thanks Grams! We did have a lovely but busy weekend, and having a cake around helped us get things done! 😀 I know the gent your thinking of (Dad) and he’s a man after my own heart. I will always prefer cream to butter icing. Have a lovely week. Sam x

Sam and Phil

Hi, I'm Sam, he's Phil. Welcome to our blog where we share our fun down time projects. We're just a young couple, happily cooking, making, quilting and baking our way through life and love. You're welcome to stop by and share the good times!

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.